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{jp} Hiroshima [1] (Japan, 1953), directed by Hideo Sekigawa.

• Category:1953, Top Films

Brilliant and extremely realistic retelling of the day in Hiroshima that the bomb dropped and following days.

It tells the story of a group of teachers, their students, and their families in the years after the bomb. In a flashback sequence, tens of thousands of extras from Hiroshima, many of them survivors, helped recreate the "hellscape" immediately following the bombing. Children are at the center of the narrative.

The Japan Teachers Union (JTU) commissioned Hiroshima-born director Kaneto Shindō to make a film adaptation of the book Children Of The A Bomb to confront the bombing and its aftermath. Shindō directed Children of Hiroshima (1952). The JTU, however, was unhappy with the film. They claimed that Shindō had "made [the story] into a tear-jerker and destroyed its political orientation" as it doesn't mention the cause of the war or condemn those who dropped it. So, they immediately funded another adaption of Children Of The A Bomb, this time turning to the communist-leaning Hideo Sekigawa.